


Being Nick

by aeternamente



Category: Kissing in the Rain (Web Series)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 02:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1572941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeternamente/pseuds/aeternamente
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James is playing Nick in an adaptation of <em>Fangirl</em>, and is finding it difficult.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being Nick

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [KitR Headcanon](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/48455) by fair-ravenclaw. 



James had played unsympathetic characters before, and he was actually pretty good at it. It was an interesting challenge, finding a character’s motivations for doing things you as a person would never do. And really, Nick was the kind of role he would have loved playing in college. It wasn’t that hard to see how Nick wouldn’t think of himself as a bad guy. He probably had friends at home who thought he was the nicest person in the world. He probably called his mother every Sunday. He probably thought there wasn’t anything unreasonable about what he did to Cath.

But Cath was exactly the problem, because Cath was Lily. It wasn’t even just that he was dating Lily in real life. If that were all, James didn’t think he’d be having this much trouble. But he’d gotten used to playing a specific role with Lily. They were the romantic leads, and even when they began their stories at odds with each other, their trajectory always bent toward the grand gesture, the declaration of love, the kiss. He was used to that, and it felt contrary to every ingrained habit to be going in a different direction with her.

It didn’t help that the shooting schedule had their big confrontation in the dorm hallway coming right after one of their early library scenes, filled with banter and flirting and the natural, easy chemistry that had made them famous. It didn’t help that some of Lily’s most endearing qualities—her eye rolling, her tendency to babble when she was nervous, that quiet, shy smile—had made it into her portrayal of Cath. James was afraid that in several of these library takes, he may have looked at Lily a little too softly, forgotten who he was supposed to be.

Then when they got to the hallway scene, it didn’t help that it was perhaps the most complicated scene in the movie. It had Andrew who was playing Levi and Natalie who played Reagan (neither of whom he knew very well), and Becca, Lily’s double, filling in as Wren when the camera wouldn’t be showing her face. (Her pixie cut reminded James of Lily’s hair when she wasn’t wearing he wig for Cath, which also didn’t help.)

The scene began and James was trying to remember his character playlist (songs from pretentious hipster bands nobody’s heard of with lyrics that don’t make any sense) and trying to hold on to what he’d written in his character journal, all while trying to get used to working on a scene with Becca-as-Wren sometimes standing in on the scene, sometimes calling out Wren’s lines from off-camera (he’d never worked with a double before and it was rather disconcerting), and trying not pay too much attention to the way Lily-as-Cath masked her hurt with her anger, precisely the way she did in real life, precisely the way that had come to cue James-in-real-life to treat her with extra care and kindness. But he had to be Nick, and he had to find Nick’s entitled indignation somewhere within himself.

The director called an exasperated cut. “James could you please try not to look so much like a hurt puppy?”

James blinked and gave his head a little shake. He was really out of it. “I’m sorry,” he said.

"Why are you apologizing?" came her response. "Nick didn’t come here to apologize. Okay, let’s go again."

This was the same director James and Lily had worked with several times before, and James had often been impressed by the way she could say something small and simple that turned out to be exactly what her actors needed to hear. He took a moment to close his eyes before the scene began.

_Nick didn’t come here to apologize. No, he came here because Professor Piper forced him to, because Cath was the only thing standing in the way of the opportunity that could launch his writing career. Not that he really should need to ask her permission. Yeah, she was a great editor, and maybe she had thrown a few bits of her own dialogue into the story, but enough for a by-line? Hardly._

He opened his eyes as the director called action and was met by Natalie-as-Reagan shooting him a look like he was something disgusting she’d just scraped off the bottom of her shoe.  _He didn’t deserve that look._

"Is this yours?" Reagan asked Cath who was approaching the dorm room laughing with her sister.

Cath stopped short, her expression cold. “ _No,_ " she said emphatically. James fished back into his memory to shooting  _Anne of Green Gables_ , back when all he ever got from Lily was cold glares and eyerolls, and when she spoke to him at all, she was snappish and rude, back when he got tired of feeling hurt by her attitude toward him, so he started feeling resentful instead.

He held on to that resentment, and when Levi entered the scene and kissed Cath on the top of her head and slung a casual arm around her shoulders, James held on to the jealousy that boiled up inside him (the kind of jealousy he usually dismissed, because he had no reason to doubt Lily’s feelings). He held on to every bitter feeling he could find in himself through several takes and lens changes and camera angles, and when they were finally done with the scene, he was absolutely exhausted.

As soon as he could manage it during the next break, he made his way to the doorstep of Lily’s trailer and knocked.

She opened the door. She was no longer wearing her wig for Cath (presumably her next scene would be as Wren) and her short, recently liberated hair stuck out in every direction. James felt a ridiculous urge to apologize, even though he knew he had nothing to apologize for—he was just acting—so instead he said, “That… was horrible.”

"Ugh, I  _know_. Get in here.” She pulled him by the collar into her trailer and kissed him. Hard. As he responded to the urgent movements of her lips, he felt all of the tension of the past hours slipping away. He was James. She was Lily. All was as it should be.


End file.
